The Internet and other digital communications networks continue to have significant effects on every aspect of personal and professional life. Network communications are becoming increasingly ubiquitous due to the reduced cost and increased capability of portable computing devices, as well as the increasing prevalence and capability of mobile telephony and other wireless communications technologies. Additionally, more and more devices, including set top boxes (STBs), television receivers, personal or digital video recorders (DVRs), placeshifting devices and the like are becoming enabled for communications over digital networks. Consumers are therefore expecting convenient control of their media content from a wide range of locations and settings.
A challenge often arises, however, in remotely controlling network-enabled media devices such as STBs, DVRs, placeshifting devices, and the like. Firewalls and other security mechanisms, for example, can limit direct access to consumer devices that are located on a home network. As a result, difficulties can arise in contacting the device to record or view programming, to change settings on the device, to view content available via the device, or to perform other tasks. Although some have attempted to establish communications with media devices over the Internet or other networks, these limited solutions have typically relied upon periodic polling by the device to obtain any commands from a remote server. These polling schemes are prone to processing delays, as well as a lack of convenient feedback or confirmation when a user requests an action. Further, the types of actions that are available through polling schemes have, in practice, been severely limited.
As a result, it is now desirable to create systems and methods for controlling a DVR, STB, placeshifting device or other network-enabled media server device. Such systems and methods would ideally provide a rich set of control options that would be available from a wide array of client devices. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.